[lbo-talk] United Healthcare Workers protest hostile takeover of their union

[James Straub]

I don't get to read lbo so much the past few months, but noticed this  
post and wanted to put it out there how completely 100% fucked up I  
think this attempted trusteeship is.  I've often made it my stock in  
trade to try to decode, explain, argue for or otherwise defend the  
various sorts of tough decisions that the leadership of SEIU and UNITE  
HERE make while trying to rebuild the labor movement.  But there's  
absolutely zero justifiable reason for this move by the Stern bloc.  I  
would argue people to be a little critical and realistic when  
assessing Rosselli's own motives--- remember, this guy was all in  
favor of centralization and organizing rights agreements when they  
were putting shit-tons of workers into -his- local--- but regardless  
of that, UHW-W has always been one of the best locals in the whole  
organization and this whole feud has everything to do with egos and  
power politics, nothing to do with organizing workers or getting  
stronger.  In fact, an awful lot of us inside SEIU are despairingly  
predicting that the fallout from this trusteeship will be lasting and  
apocalyptic--- that it may demolish much of the positive gains of the  
past two decades.  I can't even put into words how sick and disgusted  
I feel by the whole soap opera.  I know people will gloat with I-told- 
you-so-about-Stern's, and that's fine, I can understand why someone  
would say that.  But I remain steadfast in support of successful  
strategies that succeed by any measure in the near-impossible  
organizing climate of the current period.  But this trusteeship is by  
no stretch of the imagination anything like that.  It's just wrong and  
stupid and catastrophic.